Dooms Day Book

by Connie Willis

  Lady Imeyne murmured something.

  “What?” Kivrin said, and realized the old lady was praying. She looked around the hall for Eliwys. She wasn’t there. Only Maisry huddled frightenedly by the table, and the thought flickered through Kivrin’s mind that Rosemund must have tripped over her.

  “Did you fall over something?” she asked.

  “Nay,” Rosemund said, still sounding dazed. “My head hurts.”

  “Did you hit your head?”

  “Nay.” She pulled her sleeve back. “I hit my elbow on the stones.”

  Kivrin pushed the loose sleeve up past her elbow. It was scraped, but there was no blood. Kivrin wondered if she could have broken it. She was holding it at such an odd angle. “Does this hurt?” she asked, moving it gently.

  “Nay.”

  She twisted the forearm gently. “Does this?”

  “Nay.”

  “Can you move your fingers?” Kivrin said.

  Rosemund dangled them each in turn, her arm still crooked. Kivrin frowned at it, puzzled. It might be sprained, but she didn’t think she’d be able to move it so easily. “Lady Imeyne,” she said, “would you fetch Father Roche?”

  “He cannot help us,” Imeyne said contemptuously, but she started for the stairs.

  “I don’t think it’s broken,” Kivrin said to Rosemund.

  Rosemund lowered her arm, gasped, and jerked it up again. The color drained from her face, and beads of sweat broke out on her upper lip.

  It must be broken, Kivrin thought, and reached for the arm again. Rosemund pulled away, and before Kivrin even realized what was happening, toppled off the bench and onto the floor.

  She had hit her head this time. Kivrin heard it thunk against the stone. She scrambled over the bench and knelt beside her. “Rosemund, Rosemund,” she said. “Can you hear me?”

  She didn’t move. She had flung her injured arm out when she fell, as if to catch herself, and when Kivrin touched it, she flinched, but she didn’t open her eyes. Kivrin looked round wildly for Imeyne, but the old woman was not on the stairs. She got to her knees.

  Rosemund opened her eyes. “Do not leave me,” she said.

  “I must fetch help,” she said.

  Rosemund shook her head.

  “Father Roche!” Kivrin called, though she knew he could not hear her through the heavy door, and Lady Eliwys came through the screens and ran across the flagged floor.

  “Has she the blue sickness?” she said.

  No. “She fell,” Kivrin said. She laid her hand on Rosemund’s bare, outflung arm. It felt hot. Rosemund had closed her eyes again and was breathing slowly, evenly, as if she had fallen asleep.

  Kivrin pushed the heavy sleeve up and over Rosemund’s shoulder. She turned her arm up so she could see the armpit, and Rosemund tried to jerk away, but Kivrin held her tightly.

  It was not as large as the clerk’s had been, but it was bright red and already hard to the touch. No, Kivrin thought. No. Rosemund moaned and tried to pull her arm away, and Kivrin laid it gently down, arranging the sleeve under it.

  “What’s happened?” Agnes said from halfway down the stairs. “Is Rosemund ill?”

  I can’t let this happen, Kivrin thought. I must get help. They’ve all been exposed, even Agnes, and there’s nothing here to help them. Antimicrobials won’t be discovered for six hundred years.

  “Your sins have brought this,” Imeyne said.

  Kivrin looked up. Eliwys was looking at Imeyne, but absently, as if she hadn’t heard her.

  “Your sins and Gawyn’s,” Imeyne said.

  “Gawyn,” Kivrin said. He could show her where the drop was, and she could go get help. Dr. Ahrens would know what to do. And Mr. Dunworthy. Dr. Ahrens would give her vaccine and streptomycin to bring back.

  “Where is Gawyn?” Kivrin said.

  Eliwys was looking at her now, and her face was full of longing, full of hope. He has finally got her attention, Kivrin thought. “Gawyn,” Kivrin said. “Where is he?”

  “Gone,” Eliwys said.

  “Gone where?” she said. “I must speak with him. We must go fetch help.”

  “There is no help,” Lady Imeyne said. She knelt beside Rosemund and folded her hands. “It is God’s punishment.”

  Kivrin stood up. “Gone where?”

  “To Bath,” Eliwys said. “To bring my husband.”

  Transcript from the Doomsday Book

  (070114-070526)

  I decided I’d better try to get this all down. Mr. Gilchrist said he hoped with the opening of Mediaeval we’d be able to obtain a first-hand account of the Black Death, and I guess this is it.

  The first case of plague here was the clerk who came with the bishop’s envoy. I don’t know if he was ill when they arrived or not. He could have been and that was why they came here instead of going on to Oxford, to get rid of him before he infected them. He was definitely ill on Christmas morning when they left, which means he was probably contagious the night before, when he had contact with at least half the village.

  He has transmitted the disease to Lord Guillaume’s daughter, Rosemund, who fell ill on… the twenty-sixth? I’ve lost all track of time. Both of them have the classic buboes. The clerk’s bubo has broken and is draining. Rosemund’s is hard and growing larger. It’s nearly the size of a walnut. The area around it is inflamed. Both of them have high fevers and are intermittently delirious.

  Father Roche and I have isolated them in the bower and have told everyone to stay in their houses and avoid all contact with each other, but I’m afraid it’s too late. Nearly everyone in the village was at the Christmas feast, and the whole family was in here with the clerk.

  I wish I knew whether the disease is contagious before the symptoms appear and how long the incubation period is. I know that the plague takes three forms: bubonic, which is spread by fleas on the rats; pneumonic, which is droplet; and septicemic, which goes straight into the bloodstream, and I know the pneumonic form is the most contagious since it can be spread by coughing or breathing on people and by touch. The clerk and Rosemund both seem to have the bubonic.

  I am so frightened I can’t even think. It washes over me in waves. I’ll be doing all right, and then suddenly the fear swamps me, and I have to take hold of the bedframe to keep from running out of the room, out of the house, out of the village, away from it!

  I know I’ve had my plague inoculations, but I’d had my T– cells enhanced and my antivirals, and I still got whatever it was I got, and every time the clerk touches me, I cringe. Father Roche keeps forgetting to wear his mask, and I’m so afraid he’s going to catch it, or Agnes. And I’m afraid the clerk is going to die. And Rosemund. And I’m afraid somebody in the village is going to get pneumonic, and Gawyn won’t come back, and I won’t find the drop before the rendezvous.

  (Break)

  I feel a bit calmer. It seems to help, talking to you, whether you can hear me or not.

  Rosemund’s young and strong. And the plague didn’t kill everyone. In some villages no one at all died.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  They took Rosemund up to the bower, making a pallet on the floor for her in the narrow space beside the bed. Roche covered it with a linen sheet and went out to the barn’s loft to fetch bedcoverings.

  Kivrin had been afraid Rosemund would balk at the sight of the clerk, with his grotesque tongue and blackening skin, but she scarcely glanced at him. She took her surcote and shoes off and lay down gratefully on the narrow pallet. Kivrin took the rabbitskin coverlet from the bed and put it over her.

  “Will I scream and run at people like the clerk?” Rosemund asked.

  “Nay,” Kivrin said, and tried to smile. “Try to rest. Does it hurt anywhere?”

  “My stomach,” she said, putting her hand to her middle. “And my head. Sir Bloet told me the fever makes men dance. I thought it was a tale to frighten me. He said they danced till blood came out of their mouths and they died. Where is Agnes?”

  “In the loft
with your mother,” Kivrin said. She had told Eliwys to take Agnes and Imeyne up to the loft and shut themselves in, and Eliwys had without even a backward glance at Rosemund.

  “My father comes soon,” Rosemund said.

  “You must be quiet now and rest.”

  “Grandmother says it is a mortal sin to fear your husband, but I cannot help it. He touches me in ways that are not seemly and tells me tales of things that cannot be true.”

  I hope he dies in agony, Kivrin thought. I hope he is infected already.

  “My father is even now on his way,” Rosemund said.

  “You must try to sleep.”

  “If Sir Bloet were here now, he would not dare to touch me,” she said and closed her eyes. “It would be he who was afraid.”

  Roche came in, bearing an armload of bedclothes, and went out again. Kivrin piled them on top of Rosemund, tucked them in around her, and laid the fur she had taken from the clerk’s bed back over him.

  The clerk still lay quietly, but the hum in his breathing had begun again, and now and then he coughed. His mouth hung open, and the back of his tongue was coated with a white fur.

  I can’t let this happen to Rosemund, Kivrin thought, she’s only twelve years old. There must be something she could do. Something. The plague bacillus was a bacteria. Streptomycin and the sulfa drugs could kill it, but she couldn’t manufacture them herself, and she didn’t know where the drop was.

  And Gawyn had ridden off to Bath. Of course he had. Eliwys had run to him, she had thrown her arms around him, and he would have gone anywhere, done anything for her, even if it meant bringing home her husband.

  She tried to think how long it would take Gawyn to ride to Bath and back. It was seventy kilometers. Riding hard he could make it there in a day and a half. Three days, there and back. If he were not delayed, if he could find Lord Guillaume, if he did not fall ill. Dr. Ahrens had said untreated plague victims died within four or five days, but she did not see how the clerk could possibly last that long. His temp was up again.

  She had pushed Lady Imeyne’s casket under the bed when they brought Rosemund up. She pulled it out and looked through it at the dried herbs and powders. The contemps had used homegrown remedies like St. John’s wort and bittersweet during the plague, but they had been as useless as the powdered emeralds.

  Fleabane might help, but she couldn’t find any of the pink or purple flowers in the little linen bags.

  When Roche came back, she sent him for willow branches from the stream, and steeped them into a bitter tea. “What is this brew?” Roche asked, tasting it and making a face.

  “Aspirin,” Kivrin said. “I hope.”

  Roche gave a cup to the clerk, who was past caring what it tasted like, and it seemed to bring his temp down a little, but Rosemund’s rose steadily all afternoon, till she was shivering with chills. By the time Roche left to say vespers, she was almost too hot to touch.

  Kivrin uncovered her and tried to bathe her arms and legs in cool water to bring the fever down, but Rosemund wrenched angrily away from her. “It is not seemly you should touch me thus, sir,” she said through chattering teeth. “Be sure I shall tell my father when he returns.”

  Roche did not come back. Kivrin lit the tallow lamps and tucked the bedcoverings around Rosemund, wondering what had become of him.

  She looked worse in the smoky light, her face wan and pinched. She murmured to herself, repeating Agnes’s name over and over, and once she asked fretfully, “Where is he? He should have been here ere now.”

  He should have been, Kivrin thought. The bell had tolled vespers half an hour ago. He’s in the kitchen, she told herself, making us soup. Or he has gone to tell Eliwys how Rosemund is. He isn’t ill. But she stood up and climbed on the window seat and looked out into the courtyard. It was getting colder, and the dark sky was overcast. There was no one in the courtyard, no light or sound anywhere.

  Roche opened the door, and she jumped down, smiling. “Where have you been? I was—” she said and stopped.

  Roche was wearing his vestments and carrying the oil and viaticum. No, she thought, glancing at Rosemund. No.

  “I have been with Ulf the Reeve,” he said. “I heard his confession.” Thank God it’s not Rosemund, she thought, and then realized what he was saying. It was in the village.

  “Are you certain?” she asked. “Does he have the plague– boils?”

  “Aye.”

  “How many others are in the household?”

  “His wife and two sons,” he said tiredly. “I bade her wear a mask and sent her sons to cut willows.”

  “Good,” she said. There was nothing good about it. No, that wasn’t true. At least it was bubonic plague and not pneumonic, so there was still a chance the wife and two sons wouldn’t get it. But how many other people had Ulf infected, and who had infected him? Ulf would not have had any contact with the clerk. He must have caught it from one of the servants. “Are any others ill?”

  “Nay.”

  It didn’t mean anything. They only sent for Roche when they were very ill, when they were frightened. There might be three or four other cases already in the village. Or a dozen.

  She sat down on the windowseat, trying to think what to do. Nothing, she thought. There’s nothing you can do. It swept through village after village, killing whole families, whole towns. One-third to one-half of Europe.

  “No!” Rosemund screamed, and struggled to rise.

  Kivrin and Roche both dived for her, but she had already lain back down. They covered her up, and she kicked the bedclothes off again. “I will tell Mother, Agnes, you wicked child,” she murmured. “Let me out.”

  It grew colder in the night. Roche brought up more coals for the brazier, and Kivrin climbed up in the window again to fasten the waxed linen over the window, but it was still freezing. Kivrin and Roche huddled by the brazier in turn, trying to catch a little sleep, and woke shivering like Rosemund.

  The clerk did not shiver, but he complained of the cold, his words slurred and drunken-sounding. His feet and hands were cold and without feeling.

  “They must have a fire,” Roche said. “We must take them down to the hall.”

  You don’t understand, she thought. Their only hope lay in keeping the patients isolated, in not letting the infection spread. But it has already spread, she thought, and wondered if Ulf’s extremities were growing cold and what he would do for a fire? She had sat in one of their huts by one of their fires. It would not warm a cat.

  The cats died, too, she thought and looked at Rosemund. The shivering racked her poor body, and she seemed already thinner, more wasted.

  “The life is going out of them,” Roche said.

  “I know,” she said, and began picking up the bedclothes. “Tell Maisry to spread straw on the hall floor.”

  The clerk was able to walk down the steps, Kivrin and Roche both supporting him, but Roche had to carry Rosemund in his arms. Eliwys and Maisry were spreading straw on the far side of the hall. Agnes was still asleep, and Imeyne knelt where she had the night before, her hands folded stiffly before her face.

  Roche lay Rosemund down, and Eliwys began to cover her. “Where is my father?” Rosemund demanded hoarsely. “Why is he not here?”

  Agnes stirred. She would be awake in a minute and clambering on Rosemund’s pallet, gawking at the clerk. She must find some way to keep Agnes safely away from them. Kivrin looked up at the beams, but they were too high, even under the loft, to hang curtains from, and every available coverlet and fur was already being used. She began turning the benches on their sides and pulling them into a barricade. Roche and Eliwys came to help, and they tipped the trestle table over and propped it against the benches.

  Eliwys went back over to Rosemund and sat down beside her. Rosemund was asleep, her face flushed with the reddish light from the fire.

  “You must wear a mask,” Kivrin said.

  Eliwys nodded, but she didn’t move. She smoothed Rosemund’s tumbled hair back from her face.
“She was my husband’s favorite,” she said.

  Rosemund slept nearly half the morning. Kivrin pulled the Yule log off to the side of the hearth and piled cut logs on the fire. She uncovered the clerk’s feet so they could feel the heat.

  During the Black Death, the Pope’s doctor had made him sit in a room between two huge bonfires, and he had not caught the plague. Some historians thought the heat had killed the plague bacillus. More likely his keeping away from his highly contagious flock was what had saved him, but it was worth trying. Anything was worth trying, she thought, watching Rosemund. She piled more wood on.

  Father Roche went to say matins, though it was past midmorning. The bell woke Agnes up. “Who knocked over the benches?” she asked, running over to the barricade.

  “You must not come past this fence,” Kivrin said, standing well back from it. “You must stay by your grandmother.”

  Agnes clambered onto a bench and peered over the top of the trestle table. “I see Rosemund,” she said. “Is she dead?”

  “She is very ill,” Kivrin said sternly. “You must not come near us. Go and play with your cart.”

  “I would see Rosemund,” she said, putting one leg over the table.

  “No!” Kivrin shouted. “Go and sit with your grandmother!”

  Agnes looked astonished, and then burst into tears. “I would see Rosemund!” she wailed, but she went over and sat down beside Imeyne.

  Roche came in. “Ulf’s elder son is ill,” he said. “He has the buboes.”

  There were two more cases during the morning and one in the afternoon, including the steward’s wife. All of them had buboes or small seedlike growths on the lymph glands except the steward’s wife.

  Kivrin went with Roche to see her. She was nursing the baby, her thin, sharp face even sharper. She was not coughing or vomiting, and Kivrin hoped the buboes had simply not developed yet. “Wear masks,” she told the steward. “Give the baby milk from the cow. Keep the children from her,” she said hopelessly. Six children in two rooms. Don’t let it be pneumonic plague, she prayed. Don’t let them all get it.